Introducing the 9/11 TV News Archive

Posted on Sep 11, 2011

Internet Archive

As part of an enormous effort to make television programming available for scholarly and journalistic use, the digital librarians at Internet Archive have compiled more than 3,000 hours’ worth of international TV news across 20 channels from the week immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The project is co-sponsored by the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

The 9/11 Television News Archive is a library of news coverage of the events of 9/11/2001 and their aftermath as presented by U.S. and international broadcasters. A resource for scholars, journalists, and the public, it presents one week of news broadcasts for study, research and analysis.

Television is our pre-eminent medium of information, entertainment and persuasion, but until now it has not been a medium of record. This Archive attempts to address this gap by making TV news coverage of this critical week in September 2001 available to those studying these events and their treatment in the media.

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I saw some of the NBC/MSNBC repeat coverage this week-end, and most of them were referring to “explosions.” I can’t give too much significance to that term because these people are not experts. What they undoubtedly meant was a loud noise that sounded like an explosion, but could have been something else. I’m not saying there were not explosives, I’m just saying these media people are not experts.

I also noticed the almost immediate commitment to war by many leaders, we will respond, very aggressive. No apparent thought of doing it the smart way—i.e. go in, get bin Laden and his boys, drag them to prisons to be detained. No,—it was war the Republicans wanted, and many of the Democrats too.

I am curious about the lack of criticism of the city for sending these firefighters to risk their lives defending a building. Who owns the building? I believe it’s partly the port authority, but partly some billionaires from Wall Street. They should never have sent the firefighters in. They should have used bullhorns to order evacuations, tell everyone to help the injured if possible, but they should not have sent the firefighters in.

If you looked at the side of the building, the hole was huge. They should have brought in structural engineers to do some quick calculations: if you remove certain supports, and however many floors have a hole blown in the side, will the top part of the building collapse? (Yes). If the top part of the building collapses, will the rest of the building collapse? (Yes).

But no criticism of the city. No criticism of the greedy developers who wanted 100 floors so they could make more money charging rent. No criticism of the fact that because of the height, they could not design to standard engineering specifications because the building would have been too heavy, would have collapsed. The firefighters’ union should have sued the city, not just for the dead but also for the living, and those who will serve in the future.

this is a great service to offer for those who did not watch on that fateful day.
watch and be embarrassed by our president. see the initial reactions of people
while they are being honest. do your own research. read the writing on the wall.
think independently.

among the issues to consider,
why are paying (taxdollars) for the pentagon to buy an entire run of books in order
that they may destroy them?